— EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.
ndia’s 8K Miles Software
Services Ltd., a Chennai-based company with $257
million market cap, is
among three companies
named to Forbes Asia’s

2017 “Best under a Billion” list of
the top 200 publicly
traded companies in
the Asia-Pacific
region.

8K Miles Software
Services, an internet
company focused on
building solutions
around cloud computing, is headed by
Suresh Venkatachari.

Venkatachari also
owns 8K Miles Media
Group Inc., an
umbrella media group
in the U.S. that holds
the weekly newspaper, India Abroad, as
well as U.S. radio stations and movie theaters.

In its July 27 report, Forbes
identified the two other companies as Manpasand Beverages, a
Vadodara-headquartered fruit-pulp juice maker, and Kellton
Tech Solutions, a software development company based in
Hyderabad.

Manpasand Beverages has

$675 million market cap and
Kellton Tech Solutions has $77
million market cap.

When Venkatachari decided
to incubate his venture 8K Miles
at the Indian Institute of
Management Bangalore in 2008,
cloud computing was an inconspicuous term.

Yet the engineer-turned-entrepre-neur, who was then
running the electronic and internet
banking services
company
SolutionNET India
was so convinced of
cloud computing’s
potential that he
decided to explore
the sector, bringing
existing business
partners R.S.

Ramani and Harish
Ganesan into his
new enterprise.

Cloud computinghas grown rapidly,fed by demand fromstartups and large corporationsthat have grasped the economicsof renting computing power —servers, mainframes or personalcomputers — instead of owningit, as noted in a May 2017 Forbesreport on 8K Miles.

“Today, Suresh, chairman andCEO of 8K Miles SoftwareServices Limited, is reaping thebenefits of his foresight. TheForbes report in July on Asia’s

2017 “Best under a Billion” said
that last year India had seven
entries in the prestigious annual
list that honors companies with
annual revenue between $5 million and $1 billion.

It said that from a total of

18,000 candidates,
roughly 875 passed
Forbes Asia’s criteria
for profitability,
growth and modest
indebtedness. The
list excluded companies that traded
thinly, have been
trading for less than
a year, and those
with worrisome
accounting, management, ownership
or legal troubles.

In a statementJuly 27, Forbes Asiasaid those includedin the final 200 haveproduced the high-est sales and earnings per sharegrowth for both the most recentfiscal one and three-year peri-ods, and the strongest five-yearaverage return on equity.

“For Suresh, a 1988 graduate
in electronics and instrumentation engineering from Annamalai
University in Tamil Nadu, an
academic background and work
experience in technology proved
instrumental in spotting the
potential of the cloud,” the earlier Forbes report said.

I

‘Best Under
a Billion’

8K Miles Software makes
it to the Forbes 2017 list

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By Suman Guha Mozumder

Houston, Texas-basedchemicals and refiningcompany announcedplans to build a plant in the area,creating as many as 2,500 jobsand an estimated 160 permanentpositions by 2019, when the plantbecomes operational.

LyondellBasell, one of the
world’s largest plastics, chemicals and refining businesses, is
headed by Bhavesh V. (Bob)

Patel, CEO and chairman of the
board. The company made the
announcement July 21. The $2.4
billion project is the company’s
single largest capital investment
to date.

The plant will produce propy-lene oxide, or PO, used in themanufacture of bedding, furni-ture, carpeting, coatings, build-ing materials and adhesives. Itwill also create tertiary butylalcohol, or TBA, will be convert-ed to two ether-based oxyfuels,methyl tertiary butyl ether(MTBE) and ethyl tertiary butylether (ETBE).

Both are high-octane gasoline
components that help gasoline
burn more cleanly while reducing auto emissions.

The plant is expected to produce an anticipated 1 billion
pounds of propylene oxide and

2. 2 billion pounds of tertiary
butyl alcohol annually.

"This world-scale project is akey part of our organic growthstrategy which is designed tomeet rising global demand forboth urethanes and cleaner-burning oxyfuels while creatingreal, long-term value for ourshareholders," said Patel. ThePO/TBA project is part ofLyondellBasell's $5 billion organ-ic growth program taking placeon the Gulf Coast.

"We are pleased thatLyondellBasell continues to viewthe Houston area as important totheir global operations, creatingjobs and opportunities forHoustonians," saidBob Harvey, presidentand CEO of the GreaterHouston Partnershipof which Patel is aboard member. Thepartnership said thenew project furtheradvances Houston'sposition as a globalhub of petrochemicalmanufacturing, lever-aging the city's strate-gic access to theAmericas and otherglobal top markets.

LyondellBasell plans to sellthe PO and derivative products toboth domestic and global cus-tomers, while the oxyfuels willbe primarily sold into LatinAmerica and Asia. A portion ofthe TBA will remain in thedomestic market in the form ofhigh purity isobuty-lene which is usedin tires and lubri-cants. The majorityof the products willbe exported via theHouston ShipChannel, the com-pany said.Patel is a boardmember of the U.S.-India BusinessCouncil. He hassaid previously thathis company, whichowns several busi-nesses in India, is the country’sthird largest producer ofpolypropylene compounds andmaterials.Indian-led Firm to Build $2.4-billion Chemical Plant